Photographic essay to explore aging and caregiving.

FUNDING IS being sought for a photographic essay with accompanying text that explores the lives of the elderly and their caregivers in residential aged-care facilities throughout the country.

The photography project is the joint initiative of documentary photographer and journalist Alan Knowles, NZNO and the Service and Food Workers' Union (SFWU). A pilot project at Presbyterian Support Central's Woburn Elderly Care, Lower Hutt, has been completed, funded by NZNO and the SFWU. Its aim was to highlight problems while establishing the feasibility of such a project, and to be a basis for funding applications for an expanded project in rest-homes from Auckland to Invercargill.

Funding proposals have gone to national and government funding bodies. If funding is secured, a touring exhibition of up to 100 black and white documentary photographs will he mounted and a catalogue/ book published.

"The images taken so far reveal the frailty of old age and the trust that exists between residents and carers," said NZNO policy analyst Eileen Brown. "This project will create a valuable social history, put one of our lowest paid sectors on gallery walls, aid public understanding of the aging process and highlight the skills of caregivers."

Documentary photographer Alan Knowles has exhibited and published widely, including solo and group exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery, the Dowse in Lower Hutt, and at Wellington's Idiom Gallery. Last year his solo exhibition at the Dowse, Cookies, Crackers and Gingernuts, profiled workers and the biscuits they produce at Griffin's Foods in Lower Hutt. He was a grand finalist in the Wallace Art Awards 2003 and his exhibition, Boots and Suits--tramper diptychs, is showing in Wellington this month.

Knowles believes the project would record an important but neglected area of life, both in New Zealand and internationally. It would highlight the realities of aging and living in a rest-home, and by improving the public profile of caregivers, could increase morale and improve relationships between them and their employers.